


A child's Christmas in Yorkshire

by dogandmonkeyshow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Christmas memories, Gen, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 21:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16860544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: John and Mrs Hudson reminisce about childhood, Christmas and family.





	A child's Christmas in Yorkshire

Mrs Hudson watched with an indulgent expression as Rosie pushed a toy car across the hearthrug.

“Christmas really is for children,” she said, veering off from their conversation about her upcoming trip to the Bahamas for her grand-nephew’s wedding.

“Yeah, I suppose so. I never used to do much about it before.” John’s memory hopscotched through the greatest hits of his Christmases for the years since his discharge. Some years had felt more like warfare than much of his military service, but things had calmed down a lot since Rosie’s birth.

“She’s getting to an age when she’s really noticing the day.”

“She certainly notices getting drowned in gifts.” John paused for a moment while he watched his daughter race down the corridor. “Sherlock’s mum called the other day and asked if I thought Rosie might like a pony. I mean, come on.” He joined in Mrs Hudson’s laughter.

“It would need to be a very small pony to fit in your tiny garden.”

“Yeah, I can see the Council letting us keep it, too,” he replied sardonically.

“It’s nice to spoil them every once in a while, though.”

Her tones were wistful and John wondered again why she and her husband hadn’t had any kids. Not that it was any of his business, but her obvious affinity for children made it an easy source of speculation. “Maybe. I’ve never been a fan of spoilt kids.”

“Oh, pooh. Rosie’s not spoilt. Did you never get spoiled as a child, even a little?”

“No.” John instantly regretted his tone and aimed for a smooth recovery. “What about you? What were Christmases like for you and your sister when you were kids?”

It was obvious she'd noticed his gaffe and chosen to ignore it, playing along with his diversion. “Well, that was during the war, you know, when I was just little. I don’t remember much before the war. We didn’t have a lot, so I imagine they were pretty modest. Mabel and I were evacuated for the entire war, so the earliest Christmases I really remember were with the Wilsons. Mr Wilson was the older brother of my father’s supervisor at the bottling plant.”

“Really? I didn’t know you were evacuated.”

“Oh, yes, my mother was frantic to get us out of Stratford, even if the government hadn't been pushing people to get children out of the cities. Looking back, it must have been horrible for her: my father off at the war, and her on her own to take care of her mum, and us off in Yorkshire with strangers. Dad wanted her to come with us, but that would have left her mother all alone, and—well, that would have been a bit much, wouldn't it? Us and mum and granny, plus the five other children the Wilsons took in.” She sighed and a nostalgic smile appeared. “But it was the most amazing adventure.”

John smiled as the recollections brought a glow to her face.

“You hear so many horror stories about children who’d been evacuated into all sorts of awful places, treated badly. Especially those poor orphans sent to Canada and Australia. But we had a _wonderful_ time. The Wilsons were just lovely people. They had a dairy farm about an hour outside York, with fields of beautiful Jersey cows. Both their sons were off at the war and their daughter worked in a factory down in Birmingham and they so loved children.”

“Sounds like an Enid Blyton book.”

Mrs Hudson laughed. “It doesn a bit, doesn't it? Famous seven, not five, though. They took in seven children; can you imagine? They seemed wise and ancient to me at three, but they were probably not much into their fifties and just ordinary farming folk, but so kind and generous. 

“Mabel was horribly homesick for the first year or so. She was old enough to have some sense of what was really going on. I think she knew our mum might be in danger staying behind, and she'd never wanted to leave. I think I was too young to understand anything other than that we suddenly had as much to eat as we wanted, and barn cats and their two Alsatians and new friends to play with, and—” She trailed off, lost in memory. “It seemed like perfect heaven to a little girl who’d barely seen grass before, or proper trees.”

She watched Rosie pushing her toy car underneath the edge of the rug and along the floor. Sensing the fragility of the moment, John stayed silent, waiting for her to resume in her own time.

“Coming from London—and not the nice part—I mean, I’d never been further than Poplar before—it was magical. Like something from a storybook. Mrs Wilson let us go off on our own and explore—though, I think that was probably later, not when I first arrived. A ludicrous idea, these days, but I was always the adventurous one and couldn't sit still for more then three seconds, so I probably drove the poor woman mad rattling around their little farmhouse. There was another little girl staying there, Glennys Mitchell, who was a year older than me, and we were inseperable, running around the countryside like a couple of little savages whenever the weather allowed.”

John was having difficulty imagining it. Hardly the preparation he'd envision for marrying a gangster, moving to America, and doing the typing for a drug cartel. “I really don’t think of you as a country girl.”

“Oh, I wasn’t. Only those few years. But those are important years for a child. And the Christmases—oh, it was lovely. Like a fantasy of Christmas, but real. Mabel and Edith Mitchell helping Mrs Wilson with the baking and the house smelling like cinnamon and nutmeg for days. And Johnny Mitchell practicing for the Christmas Eve service at the church, such a beautiful voice he had. Tom and Peter Chapman playing jokes—they were a pair of live wires. Peter flirting with Edith and her teasing him back. 

“It didn't seem anything out of the ordinary, but it was. It always felt like a real family Christmas, in the most unreal circumstances. Looking back, it's obvious the Wilsons made a real effort to make us feel like a family, even just a temporary one. Which is extraordinary, when you think about it. What a remarkable gift that was; we were so lucky.”

So that was who she'd learnt it from, John thought as she continued. 

“It's probably just nostalgia and only remembering the good bits—”

“That doesn't make them less real.”

“No, it doesn't, does it? You need those good memories to look back on, sometimes.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Mrs Hudson reached across and squeezed his hand briefly, then turned to Rosie, who was presenting her with a rather worse-for-wear doll, whose invented history Rosie began to regale Mrs Hudson with. 

While John watched his former landlady listen intently, making appreciative noises in all the right places, he thought that perhaps there were some kinds of luck that you could inherit, passed along like a gift that grows with each hand that touches it. He hoped so, anyway.

~ + ~


End file.
